Sunday, June 03, 2012

The Tide Rushes In…

And the tide rushes out. And at the Bay of Fundy, it’s quite dramatic. We’re currently in Moncton, NB, which is at the western end of the Bay. When we visited Fundy last year we camped at Fundy National Park, which is about 50 miles east of Moncton. About in the middle, between where we were then and where we are now, is a geographical feature called Hopewell Rocks. The rocks are exposed at low tide, and that’s when folks like to visit. So on the first trip we checked the tide clock and found that low tide would be at 6:30pm. So, on our last day at Fundy we drove about 25 miles to see the rocks. Unfortunately, the park in which the rocks are located closed at 6:00pm and we arrived at 6:05pm. So no rocks.

This time we checked both the tide clock and the park closing time, and here’s what we found.

The Hopewell Rocks, and specifically, the Flower Pot Rocks section, are exposed at low tide. The weird erosions are carved in the soft rock by the motion of the extreme Fundy tides, which means at one time the ocean bottom you see in these pictures was up near where the trees and grass are. But that was a few million years ago, so there aren’t any pictures.

It’s fun to walk on the ocean bottom anywhere along the Fundy coast. The normal high tide in this area is just above Penny’s head, but since tides are variable, they sometimes get much higher.

Moncton itself is along the Petticodiac River, which flows into the closed end of the Bay. Since the river feeds into the Bay of Fundy, at high tide the Bay feeds into the river, and it comes in with a fairly impressive wave. Like the tides that cause the wave, the wave height is variable. What we saw was maybe a foot high. It can be as high as three feet or more at times. The wave is called a Tidal Bore, and the city is kind enough to provide a schedule of it’s arrival times. When we were there it came in right on time at 9:21 am.

Here’s a shot of the river about an hour later. You can see that the tide doesn’t come in all at once.

I’ve mentioned previously that our two cats aren’t the best of friends. So we were a bit surprised to see the following scene this afternoon. Maybe peace is at hand.

1 Comments:

Enjoying catching up with your blog Lew, the photos are great and I really loved the one with your two cats cuddling on the recliner together. I hope to finish reading the rest of your posts today, so keep em coming and thanks so much for allowing us to vicariously share in your adventure together. Love, ACE